Nineties horror movie star looks unrecognisable 25 years after film made audiences throw up in the cinema
BLAIR Witch Project star Heather Donahue looks very different now – with a brand new career and name,
Heather, now 49, played the ill-fated female lead in the 1997 creepy woodland horror.
Heather found global fame thanks to the iconic close-up scene that saw her hyperventilate at the camera while tears and snot trickled down her face.
Clad in a grey beanie, the youngster could be seen petrified as she begged for the trauma to stop.
Heather has now reinvented herself and goes by the name of Rei Hance since 2020.
In 2008, Heather decided to put her acting career on hold and has since dedicated her time to growing medical cannabis.
She released a memoir about her new line of work called Growgirl in 2012 and she has written a pilot for a programme called the High Country.
In a 2016 interview in GQ, she discussed the reasons for changing her name.
She told the publication: “My name and face are forever going to be someone else’s intellectual property.
“My snot-flooded portrait was back. It’s all anyone wanted to talk to me about… Then Lionsgate called. The company that originally bought The Blair Witch Project was purchased by Lionsgate and they’re the ones behind this new sequel.
“They asked what they could do to show me how much they appreciated my work in the original.
“They made sure my last name wasn’t used anywhere. In their press materials, their protagonist goes in search of his ‘sister’ but they don’t use my name.
“For all the talk of Hollywood being populated with jerks and sharks, these guys were actually being considerate and were genuinely concerned that this would not be any more disruptive to my life than was inevitable.”
She now runs her own podcast called F*ck Suffering.
Her bio reads: “I hold F*ck Suffering practice groups, I pocket coach busy people via WhatsApp and I live in the great state of Maine.”
Despite winning the Golden Raspberry for Worst Actress in 1999, she went on to star in 2000 romantic comedy Boys and Girls with Jason Biggs and Freddie Prinze Junior and indie drama Seven and a Match.
Heather also appeared in comedy New Suit, Steven Spielberg’s Emmy Award-winning mini-series Taken in 2002 and guest-starred in US TV series Without A Trace and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
